Electric haircutting appliances are generally known and include trimmers, clippers and shavers whether powered by main-supplied electricity or battery-driven. Such devices are generally used to trim body hair, in particular facial and head hair to allow a person to have a well-groomed appearance.
Commonly, conventional devices for cutting hair comprise a main body forming an elongated housing having a front or cutting end and an opposite handle end. A cutting assembly is disposed at the front end. The cutting assembly usually comprises a stationary cutting blade, which is sometimes also referred to as “guard”, and a moveable cutting blade, which is sometimes also referred to as “cutter”. The moveable cutting blade is displaceably mounted on the top surface of the stationary cutting blade and resiliently biased against said top surface of the stationary cutting blade. The cutting assembly itself is usually fixed in a single position relative to the housing of the hair clipping device, such that the orientation of the cutting assembly is determined by a user orientating the housing of hair clipping device. The tips of cutting blades usually jut out of the front side of the hair clipper housing, such that the tips of the cutting blades are always visible to the user. This makes it easier for the user to see where exactly the hairs are cut, which is especially advantageous when using the hair clipper to form and create fine hair contours.
Since there is a great user demand for hair clipping devices that offer the possibility to be used for different haircut lengths, many known hair clipping devices make use of separate, differently sized comb attachments. These comb attachments are generally mounted over the cutting assembly to the front end of the housing of the hair clipping device to position the cutting assembly relative to the skin. In other words, such a comb attachment is used as a guide that moves over the skin and guides hair towards the cutting assembly. Typically, these comb attachments are mounted over the cutting assembly and space the cutting blades apart from the surface of the skin from which the hairs extend. However, always having to replace the comb attachment by a different one when the haircut length shall be changed might be cumbersome for the user, as this is not only time consuming, but the user also has to store a plurality of differently sized comb attachments.
Therefore, a lot of prior art hair clipping devices use only one comb attachment that is adjustable in different positions relative to the hair clipper housing. The user may then shift the comb attachment between different positions leading to different haircut lengths. These moveable comb attachments may, for example, be adjusted between haircut lengths of 3 mm, 5 mm, 7 mm, 9 mm and 11 mm. Of course, other adjustable ranges and steps are possible. These systems, however, include the disadvantage that they only allow for haircut lengths of 3 mm and above, since these lengths are usually the smallest lengths that can be reached with the comb attachment in its shortest position. Of course, the user may also use the hair clipping device without comb attachment, which usually leads to a haircut length of 0.3 mm. However, haircut lengths in between these limit ranges, e.g. in between 0.3 mm and 3 mm, cannot be accomplished with such systems.
Further hair clipping devices are known from the prior art that allow an adjustment for smaller cutting length ranges, i.e. between 0.3 mm and 3 mm. These systems usually enable an adjustment of the position of the moveable cutting blade with respect to the stationary cutting blade in order to increase or decrease the distance between the tips of the cutting blades. The moveable cutting blade may in this case be arranged in different positions along an axis that is perpendicular to the axis along which the moveable cutting blade reciprocates relative to the stationary cutting blade during use. This type of haircut length adjustment is also denoted as “tip-to-tip adjustment”, wherein the distance between the tips of the cutting teeth of the moveable cutting blade and the tips of the cutting teeth of the stationary cutting blade is denoted as “tip-to-tip distance”.
WO 2013/080114 A1 discloses a hair clipping device to which a comb attachment may be attached. This hair clipping device allows adjusting the haircut length both by means of adjusting the position of the comb attachment relative to the hair clipper housing as well as by means of adjusting the tip-to-tip distance. However, the tip-to-tip distance may only be adjusted if the comb attachment is removed from the hair clipping device. If the comb attachment is attached to the hair clipping device, the moveable cutting blade will be automatically pushed into its foremost position by means of a blocking element. As long as the comb attachment is attached to the hair clipping device, the tip-to-tip adjustment is so to say disengaged. As a consequence this means that for longer haircut lengths the user may attach the comb attachment and then adjust the position of the comb attachment relative to the hair clipper housing for the variety of possible haircut lengths. If, on the other hand, the user needs a shorter haircut length, e.g. in the range of 0.3 mm to 3 mm, the user has to detach the comb attachment in order to be able to adjust the tip-to-tip distance. This might appear to be cumbersome for some users.
WO 2013/080114 A1 discloses a further embodiment that enables adjusting the tip-to-tip distance simultaneously with an adjustment of the position of the comb attachment. However, in this case both adjustment types are linked to each other, such that increasing the distance of the comb attachment to the hair clipper housing at the same time also increases the tip-to-tip distance even if this is not necessarily desired.
There is thus still room for improvement.